A recent study showed that flavored tobacco makes smoking easier and attracts new smokers, the Korea Center for Disease Control and Prevention 질병관리본부 (KCDC) said Monday.

Professor Kim Hee-jin 김희진 of Yonsei University 연세대학교 led a research team to identify the effects of smoking flavored cigarettes, regarding smoking cessation and persistence, on 9,063 subjects aged 13 to 39.

The result indicated about 65 percent of the subjects used flavored cigarettes, and especially, the rate of young people and women were very high. Among the research subjects, 73.1 percent of female smokers tended to smoke flavored cigarettes compared to 58.3 percent of male smokers.

The research also showed that flavored cigarettes attempters had 1.4 times higher probability persistence in smoking than ordinary cigarettes. The reasons for choosing a flavored cigarette included pleasant smell, less odor, and little to no physical discomfort.

Such characteristics of the flavored cigarettes also played a significant role in lowering smoking hazard and health warning perceptions.

“The coarse and uncomfortable trait of cigarette smoke acts as a barrier in the initial stage of attempting to smoke cigarettes,” said Oh Kyung-won 오경원, a KCDC official. “However, flavored cigarettes disguise these irritating properties, making it easier to try and maintain smoking than ordinary cigarettes.”

The Ministry of Health and Welfare 보건복지부 plans to submit a bill to regulate flavored cigarettes after consulting with other related ministries and agencies.